Tag Archives | Immigration

When the crisis of unaccompanied minors migrating to the United States burst onto the front pages last summer, it seemed at last the U.S. government would come to grips with its legacy of disaster amid the current havoc in Central America.

The United Nations documented that most of the children were fleeing violence — violence caused in part by the failure to restore constitutional order following the Honduran coup of 2009 and the unfinished peace processes after the dirty wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, where Washington propped up right-wing dictatorships for years.

The governments of those three countries — known as the Northern Triangle — certainly share some of the blame for the mass exodus, which is not as new or unprecedented as the press made out when it sounded the alarm.

But in the end, the problem isn’t one of assigning blame, but rather helping children in conditions of extreme vulnerability, right?

Prisons employ and exploit the ideal worker. Prisoners do not receive benefits or pensions. They are not paid overtime. They are forbidden to organize and strike. They must show up on time. They are not paid for sick days or granted vacations. They cannot formally complain about working conditions or safety hazards. If they are disobedient, or attempt to protest their pitiful wages, they lose their jobs and can be sent to isolation cells. The roughly 1 million prisoners who work for corporations and government industries in the American prison system are models for what the corporate state expects us all to become. And corporations have no intention of permitting prison reforms that would reduce the size of their bonded workforce. In fact, they are seeking to replicate these conditions throughout the society.

States, in the name of austerity, have stopped providing prisoners with essential items including shoes, extra blankets and even toilet paper, while starting to charge them for electricity and room and board.

Abby Martin speaks with Eugene Puryear, organizer with the ANSWER coalition about President Obama’s executive action on immigration reform and how this will impact the millions of undocumented people in the US.

The Indianapolis Star just withdrew a comic that many deemed as racist and insensitive. The comic was on the topic of immigration. See the comic here. Not only was this comic racist, it was also incredibly off the mark and here’s why. This clip features Ron Placone and is a video summary from the Indie Bohemians Morning Show: A Morning Show, for people who hate Morning Shows.

The disinformation mantra has long been “Everything You Know Is Wrong.” Now a new poll across 14 countries by Ipsos MORI shows that in fact, most people really are wrong about the basic make-up of their populations and the scale of key social issues.

Teenage birth rates: on average, people across the 14 countries think that 15% of teenagers aged 15-19 give birth each year. This is 12 times higher than the average official estimate of 1.2% across these countries. People in the US guess at a particularly high rate of teenage births, estimating it at 24% of all girls aged 15-19 when it’s actually 3%. But other countries with very low rates of teenage births are further out proportionally: for example, Germans think that 14% of teenage girls give birth each year when it’s actually only 0.4% (35x the actual figure).

BTS Producer Manuel Rapalo interviews Alex Main, Senior Associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research and Arturo Viscarra, Advocacy Coordinator for the School of Americas Watch, about the roots of the child migrant crisis at the US-Mexico Border and what actual powers President Obama has to change the situation.

Why Cap’s words matter now: Congress will leave soon for its August recess, potentially leaving the crisis on the border with Mexico completely unresolved. With just hours left until the legislative branch leaves town until Sept. 7, the president’s requested $3.7 billion in emergency funding to deal with the crisis of unaccompanied child refugees fleeing to the U.S. from Central America has not been assigned. Obama’s legislation is quite likely dead in the water.

A competing House GOP-sponsored bill which funds spending through September may have a rocky road in the Senate. The Republican version has provisions designed to appeal to the anti-immigration crowd, like eliminating hearings for child migrants in order to speed their deportation. While Democrats consider those provisions a poison pill, it is still possible that most conservative opponents of immigration reform will decide the bill doesn’t go far enough.

Scary stuff. Probably happens (on both sides) more often than we know. It was a “drug interdiction” mission.

TUCSON – News 4 Tucson has learned a Mexican military helicopter travelled across the border and fired on U.S. Border Patrol agents.

It happened in the early morning hours Thursday, west of the San Miguel Gate on the Tohono O’Odham Nation. The chopper fired on the agents but missed them. The chopper then flew back into Mexico. We’re told Mexican authorities contacted the U.S. and apologized for the incident.

We’ve received two statements regarding the incident:

Art del Cueto, Border Patrol Tucson Sector union president:

The incident occurred after midnight and before 6 a.m. Helicopter flew into the U.S. and fired on two U.S. Border Patrol agents. The incident occurred west of the San Miguel Gate on the Tohono O’odham Indian Nation. The agents were unharmed. The helicopter went back into Mexico. Mexico then contacted U.S.

Regarding how the terms we use frame our perceptions, Mehran Khalili on the terms for people from other places:

Immigration, a lexicon: You’re a ‘migrant’ when you’re very poor; ‘immigrant’ when you’re not so poor; and ‘expat’ when you’re rich.

Semantics matter: the images evoked by the words used to refer to a group of people will, over time, help to define what we think about that group and how we act towards it. And in the case of people migrating to Greece who have in recent years been badly mishandled by the state, the use of neutral language in reporting by international media and NGOs is vital.

Literally speaking, ‘migrants’ and ‘expats’ do indeed have the same meaning. But since practical usage can be something else entirely, feed both terms into Google Images to see how they’re illustrated. ‘Expats’ in Greece are depicted as white; ‘migrants’ as darker-skinned.

Who decides what ethnicity a person should have to be called a migrant?